It’s been a while! But we’re back ;)

Artists

Biomes

One and a half weeks back we were still bent on making a nighttime biome, so our artists worked on some concept art for it. Realising in hindsight it posed too much trouble changing the lighting in real time with the current amount of time we had left, we dropped the Nighttime Biome and focused on making the Winter biome instead, as it would fit within the same lighting setup. 

3D Biomes

Based on the concept, we created the 3d assets for the islands. The following pictures show the brand new islands that are incorporated in the game from now on!

Player Movement Tracer

Finally! We have implemented a feature that many people were looking forward to! - The movement tracer - to make it easier for the player to see where he will jump on if he is in air. The red circle under the feet of the player will be projected downwards, so in air, the player can see where he will land, which wasn't possible before because of the lighting and additional shadows casted from meshes.

A little extra 

The player has now a backpack attached to him to visualize the storage for the teddies he will collect. The texture of it will be adjusted because currently, the contrast between the bag texture and the teddy is not good enough. 

Blocks

To emphasize the depth and volume of the water in our game we reworked the water textures and material. We were able to achieve a result we found more promising and fitting in our game but are currently faced with a transparency issue we hope to fix in the final weeks to come. 

The death block now has the ability to kill the player and is animated, whereas before the block would just have a bunch of empty holes in the top , so watch out for those nasty spike blocks cause they can really hurt.

Music/Sounds

Some fun news, we now have a song that plays during the game, it’s nothing too special but we’re very happy with how the result turned out.

Aside from our song we also remade some sound effects so they sound nicer (and cuter) like our jump sound effect.

Particles

When the happiness is below a certain amount, the main character will start sweating as a sign of his “not so happy” state of mind and a waterfall got added to one of our islands in the background, can you spot it?

Shark

We were able to rig and animate something simple for our shark to give it that little push to make it feel more alive. 

Coders

Shark

Beware of what lurks below the waters, the shark needs a little bit of time to wake up but will soon get hungry. The shark will follow a circular pathing while passive and swim towards the player while aggressive. If no player is found, the shark will continue following his circular path.

The shark becomes aggressive once the player falls into the water.

Happiness meter

Be sure to keep an eye on the new implemented happiness meter because once your happiness is low, you won’t be able to move for a second. The happiness meter takes into account your fear of the hungry shark that is swimming in the water! Better stay away from the water as it will make your happiness decrease faster! But don’t be afraid, young climber, you will be able to collect teddy bears on your journey upwards that will make you happy again. Also there’s a special new comfort block that will help you get your happiness back up again.

Comfort block

This block looks like a bed, which automatically makes you feel better, that’s why once you step on it your happiness will increase.

Deadly spike blocks

I don’t recommend stepping on the spikes. Unless you like death.

Better ensured block path

The game tries it’s best to ensure that there is always a path to follow. Blocks will not spawn too far away from each other and the game will not block your path with another block. Unless the obstructing block happens to have a fast / slow enough fall speed. Then the player will have to play around the scenario.

Pause menu controller navigation

The pause menu now has controller support. We are working to implement this in the other menus as well!

Biomes with different islands and different backgrounds

The biome changes every so often depending on the achieved height. You will see the background texture change and all the islands will update.

In the future we will have obstructing clouds that prohibits you from seeing the island change on the spot, this cloud will stay for about 1-2 seconds and then go away. The game scene will have transformed towards a totally different setting after this transition!